130 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



THE PLUM CURCUIIO. 



(Cnnotrachclus neiiiipJiar, Hprbst ) 



PER IlKAD nv TIIE EDITOR llEFOKE THE 1 

 IIORTK ri.Tl'RAL SOCIETY AT ITS FOUR- 

 ANNUAL SLEETING. 



Colors— (a and i<) whitish; (o) lirown, black aiKlclay-ycHow 



Ladies and Gentlemen: You have invited 

 me to read an essay on the Pkim Curcnlio. I 

 accepted the invitation with the intention of 

 preparing an exhaustive jjaper on the subject. 

 But the sudden death of my esteemed associate 

 and your State Entomologist, the late Beuj. D. 

 Walsh, so completely upset my arrangements, 

 and so increased my labors, that I have found 

 time only to substitute instead the following 

 hasty notes. 



So much has been written on the habits of 

 this one little insect, and on the best means of 

 protecting our fruits from its injurious work, 

 that one almost tires of repeating those estab- 

 lished facts in its history which, at fii-st thought, 

 it strikes one that all interested should know. 

 But this is a bustling, shifting, progressive 

 world, and there are yet some mooted points to 

 be settled in the natural history of our Curcnlio. 



When an experienced man is taken from our 

 midst, the fund of wisdom and the store of 

 knowledge which he had accumulated during a 

 long and busy life-time, are in a great measure 

 buried with him. His younger ioliowers profit 

 as much as they can by his recorded experience, 

 but they must necessarily go over the same 

 ground which he had been over before. Facts 

 in Nature will consequently have to be repeated 

 for all time to come ; but it should be our object 

 to reach beyond the facts already known, to 

 obtain a knowledge of all things as far as the 

 mind is capable of, and to delve still more deeply 

 into hidden truths, so that by observation and 

 perseverance, we may be enabled to read aright 

 the yet unread parts of that great recorded book, 

 which was printed, paged, collated and bonnd 

 by the fingers o.l Omnipotence! Besides, there 

 are actually many fruit-growers who do not 

 know a Curcnlio when thev see one. Thus three 



different correspondents have, during the past 

 summer, requested a description of the little 

 pest, because, as they contended, they were not 

 acquainted with ils appearance. And yet one 

 of these gentlemen, as I afterwards ascertained 

 from personal observation, was, at the very 

 time when he penned his question, suffering 

 from injuries caused by the " Little Turk." 



In this brief paper on the Curcnlio I shall, 

 therefore, necessarily have to repeat many of 

 the facts which were published in your own 

 Transactions for 1867, and of those which may 

 be found in the First Annual Report on the En- 

 tomology of Missouri. 



Established Facts in the History df tlie Curcnlio. 



In order to lay this question before you in the 

 very clearest light, it will be best to divide this 

 paper into two diflerent parts. In the first part 

 we will give only those facts which are estab- 

 lished beyond all peradveuture; and in the 

 second part, we will consider only those points 

 upon which opinions difler. 



The Plum Curcnlio, commoiil)' known all 

 over the country as TIIE Ci'RCulio, is a small, 

 roughened, warty, brownish beetle, belonging 

 to a very extensive family known as Suout- 

 beetles (Cukcui.ionid.k). It measures about 

 one-fifth of an inch in length, exclusive of the 

 snout, and may be distinguished from all other 

 North American Snout-beetles by having an 

 elongate, knife-edged hump, resembling a piece 

 of black sealing-wax, on the middle of each 

 wing-case, behind which humps there is abroad 

 clay-yellow band, with more or less white in 

 its middle. For the benefit of those who are 

 either fortunate or unfortunate enough not to 

 be acquainted with the gentleman, I have pre- 

 pared the above side sketch, which will give 

 at a glance its true form, and obviate the neces- 

 sity of further description and waste of time. 

 (Fig. 92, c.) 



This is the perfect or imago form of the Cur- 

 cnlio ; and it is in this hard, shelly, beetle state, 

 that the female passes the winter, sheltering 

 under the shingles of houses, under the old 

 bark of both forest and fruit trees, under logs 

 and in rubbish of all kinds. As spring ap- 

 proaches, it awakens from its lethargy, and, if 

 it has slept in the forest, instinctively searches 

 for the nearest orchard. In Central Illinois and 

 in Central ISIissouri the beetles may be found 

 in the trees during the last half of April, but in 

 the extreme southern part of Illinois they ap- 

 pear about two weeks earlier, while in the 

 extreme northern part of the same State they 

 ax-e fully two weeks later. Thus, in the single 



